Casualty
by Angelfirenze
Summary: She shuddered and he did his level best to ignore it. Third in the Without a Name series.


**Casualty**  
_By Angelfirenze_

**Disclaimer:** I own DVD sets, not characters. One cancels out the other.

**Summary:** She shuddered and he did his level best to ignore it.

**Notes:** What the fuck is wrong with these people? And, yes, I'm being unspecific on purpose. Sequel to Bottleneck and Diversion. Reviews are always encouraged and deeply appreciated.

_Curse your inevitable and predictable betrayal! - Hoban 'Wash' Washburne; 'Serenity', Firefly_

He was released under the condition of supervision and reaffirmation of his promise not to drive for another year after the next seizure and the ones after that. No one believed he'd ever drive again. He listened to the way his mother exhaled as she opened the front door to let the both of them in and took a few moments to marshal enough strength to stand properly before limping over the threshold.

Immediately, he was taken aback by the cluttered state of his parents' -- his mother's living room, covered in a layer of crumpled tissues, a coffee mug half full of some molded liquid sat abandoned on the living room table. House halted as an unwanted vision of objects lying haphazardly -- abruptly forgotten as time stood still -- about assaulted him. When she'd called, it had been past three in the morning and her voice had held a strangely ethereal quality in the tone. The facts were stated and she'd asked him to come down for the funeral. He'd held out for days but the Fates (as usual, in collusion with Wilson and Cuddy) had seen fit to return him to this place.

He'd given up eventually. They'd all known he would -- particularly him. Sighing heavily with exhaustion, House slowly lowered himself onto the couch and his eyes closed of their own accord. A moment later, he heard something thud on the coffee table before him and opened his eyes once more to see a package where the mug had previously sat. Glancing at his mother now holding it, House sighed and bent forward and retrieved the cardboard envelope.

"You arranged to have it delivered here?" she asked him as he began to work to get the strip of tape loose before prising it away.

"Yeah," he intoned quietly, running his hand over the plastic wrap covering the new DVD set he'd coveted for so many days. It still intrigued him that he'd felt more strongly about knowing a package was coming for him than by the idea of his father being dead. He pushed the thought away and focused on what he knew his mother would ask next.

"You addressed it to James," she prodded and he raised his eyebrows in confirmation.

"I figured I'd be here sooner or later. His name on it means it was more likely my DVDs wouldn't sit on the porch all day and get warped by the sunlight. I didn't think he'd actually see it." His eyes closed again. "I was right."

Blythe sighed and settled her hands on her hips. "It's a federal offense to open other people's mail, Gregory, orchestrated or not."

He felt his insides harden once more and turned his head to stare at her. "It's also a crime to kidnap people to get them to attend funerals. Apparently, law enforcement will even look the other way, too. I guess some crimes are more socially acceptable than others."

House turned away then and finished inspecting his prize. When he finally got up to put in the DVD player atop the television, his mother was gone. He ignored the sound of running water in the kitchen in favor of watching Jack Bauer violate the Constitution and Bill of Rights because that suited him, too.

"Everybody does anything to get what they want," he muttered to himself. He was asleep before the credits finished rolling.

When he awoke again, House found himself wrapped in a blanket and the television turned off. It was dark outside and apparently he'd been asleep for hours. He looked over from his now prone vantage point to find his mother nursing a cold cup of what appeared to be more coffee.

"You shouldn't drink caffeine this late," he murmured, clearing his throat but to no avail. His voice stayed gravelly and his mother didn't put the mug down, continuing to stare into space. House sighed and turned over, finding a more comfortable position and sliding back into sleep.

_...I lived too fast and I love too much and I'll die too young but I chose this cup that I drink from -- knew what I was getting into, but I couldn't let out what I had to keep in, I'm ashamed of myself, an unspeakable sin that I've committed and..._

He'd spent the last fifteen minutes on a stool at the breakfast bar, staring at a glass of high-pulp orange juice and a bowl of soggy Honey Bunches of Oats before he finally spit out the question.

"Why'd you stay at the hospital? I'm not a kid anymore."

"Why would I have left you?" Blythe asked, bunching her napkin in her hand. Her half of the fifteen minutes had been spent pushing scrambled eggs around her plate until he'd finally told her they were probably rife with bacteria and she shouldn't eat them.

She'd flatly looked at him and pushed a forkful into her mouth, her eyes locked on his as she chewed extra slowly. He'd rolled his eyes and turned around on his stool and surveyed the green bushes lining the backyard through the rear window. Eventually, she'd spoken and her voice was so quiet House realized it was a moment before he understood what she'd said. After registering her response, he made his face as expressionless as possible.

"Because you hate me."

She froze, her hands clenching around the edge of the countertop, before her eyes closed and she sagged slightly. "No, I don't."

"Do not lie to me," he ground out, glaring at her now. "Not now. Not when you stood aside and let him steamroll me every chance he could. Not when you used the guy who told me we weren't friends and never had been and my boss to kidnap me and force me to come here. If I can't pick up and leave because my license has been restricted then do not lie to me and -- "

"I never hated you!" She burst out, her head jerking back up to meet his eyes. "I hated -- hate seeing his face every time I _look_ at you! I hate knowing your father hated himself for not _protecting_ me -- as if he could have done something from so far away! I hate knowing that you ever felt the urge to say John wasn't your father! That you have every right to be so hateful toward us both -- toward...him."

House scowled and his eyes dropped to the countertop. He could hear her crying once again and felt the backs of his own eyes burning. "I shouldn't have to wish I'd been aborted," he whispered, his throat feeling as though it was closing up. She shuddered and he did his level best to ignore it.

"I know you know he was at the funeral, same as I did," she said quietly, after she'd mostly composed herself again. At the edge of his vision, he could see her hands playing with the napkin she held, twisting and shredding it as she spoke. "Your father had to look that man in the eye every day after he came back from Okinawa -- he had to call him 'sir'. He forced himself to. We both had to see his face in yours and watch you outgrow John and I'm not saying we were right at all because we -- we weren't. It wasn't your fault, what happened to me. But it wasn't your father's fault, either. He wanted so badly for you to be his, completely and without question and you decided you weren't his son -- "

"If he wanted me to be his son," House snapped, slamming his cane into the kitchen floor with a loud crack. "_May-be_ initiating boot camp before I was old enough to walk, insulting me, and making me feel like killing myself for things I had no control over wasn't the way to go -- or am I wrong in that belief? I didn't _decide_ I wasn't a part of this family. I didn't _decide_ to feel like a freak and a blight -- I didn't fucking ask to _be here_ and I can't even rectify it! I won't fucking die!"

A terrible violence was building inside him and House grabbed the cup of orange juice on the counter before him and hurled it at the opposite end of the kitchen. It hit the refrigerator and orange sludge splattered all over everything nearby. The hard plastic cup cracked loudly against the metal door and the floor beneath, finally rolling away somewhere. House was screaming now, wordlessly, hopelessly -- his voice raw, his eyes shut tight against tears that persistently breached his efforts to block them. He was burning up with hate and fear and anger and the floor fell away beneath him and he knew nothing.

He woke on the kitchen floor some unknown time later, his head in his mother's lap as she held ice wrapped in a towel to the back of his scalp. He tried to move, to get up, but she gripped his chest in her arm and held him still. Her bathrobe was darkened where tears leaked into it and she wouldn't let go of him.

"I'll drive you back to Princeton if someone will meet us there," she said quietly, her hand and the ice moving away before her fingers came back to run gently through his scalp. "We can go our separate ways then."

House flinched. "I don't want..." he started but stopped. What was the point?

She looked down at his face and her mouth trembled. "What do you want?"

He was tired, so empty and ill.

"Not to be a problem anymore. To just...not be."

"I don't want that," she disagreed, biting her lip as more tears fell. "I never wanted that."

"Why the hell not?"

She frowned slightly, then, "Because you deserved -- deserve to live independently of the way you got here. You deserve to let go of what I cannot. You deserve to be with people who can love -- and hate -- you unconditionally. You're who you are and nothing else. And you deserve to be free."

His eyes closed again and he found that he could breathe.


End file.
